No one "really" wants it, except Blizzard. Because end of expansions lead to a lot of sub drop offs, especially from the more casual player base, because they increasingly lack things to do. So, they'd, ideally, like to keep those people constantly engaged, so they keep paying their sub fees. Plus, an extra few million x $40 is always good to them, I'm sure.

That might be true, but I was talking about something else - increasing the team size by X% does NOT translate into X% more stuff, that's not how things work, and that's not the intention. Increases in output are much smaller than X% at first, and the aim is to get much more than X% later. I think that right now the team developing WoW is in the first phase, and will be there for at least a year.

Which is why in addition to hiring more people, they made substantial changes to how they develop. Those two things go hand in hand and make for faster content releases. Again we have seen it happen in Mop so there is no reason why that faster pace of development can't and won't be applied to expansions as well.

Full Beta Testing of leveling, crafting, all the artwork, dungeons and first tier raids generally takes around 6 months. That's held true throughout, since TBC was announced. So the idea that we'll hear about Warlords of Draenor or whatever and be playing ANYTHING before summertime is very unlikely.

The ONE thing that is very likely about that supposed "leak" that said that the Horde would be able to play Mo'arg and the Alliance would be able to play Ethereals.... was the December 2014 ship date.

And frankly, that's distressing. I have no problem sticking around and if there really are as many changes coming as look to be coming then it will be worth all of that work, but I can't see folks sticking with Siege for MORE than a year.

That said, I dunno when they ship it before then. I don't recall a summer ship date, ever, for an expac. And that puts it at the earliest in the fall.

So even if there are no new races or classes (my guess) and the big reveal is a crafting revamp as opposed to a cooking revamp from MoP (my guess), the math of the development scheduling still puts it later in 2014 no matter what they do, where it is or what the story is.

So, we can guess all we like, but for sure, there's just no way we see anything ship before summer. We just know too much about how Blizz goes about it's game development to know that it could come sooner.

Full Beta Testing of leveling, crafting, all the artwork, dungeons and first tier raids generally takes around 6 months. That's held true throughout, since TBC was announced. So the idea that we'll hear about Warlords of Draenor or whatever and be playing ANYTHING before summertime is very unlikely.

The ONE thing that is very likely about that supposed "leak" that said that the Horde would be able to play Mo'arg and the Alliance would be able to play Ethereals.... was the December 2014 ship date.

And frankly, that's distressing. I have no problem sticking around and if there really are as many changes coming as look to be coming then it will be worth all of that work, but I can't see folks sticking with Siege for MORE than a year.

That said, I dunno when they ship it before then. I don't recall a summer ship date, ever, for an expac. And that puts it at the earliest in the fall.

So even if there are no new races or classes (my guess) and the big reveal is a crafting revamp as opposed to a cooking revamp from MoP (my guess), the math of the development scheduling still puts it later in 2014 no matter what they do, where it is or what the story is.

So, we can guess all we like, but for sure, there's just no way we see anything ship before summer. We just know too much about how Blizz goes about it's game development to know that it could come sooner.

There is no gosh darn hanky-spanky rootin' tootin' way the next expansion is still over a year away. Blizz may be sloooooow with releases and perfectionists with their software, but they're also a company. As in, shareholders. As in, people who have a stake in the company and who would be very distressed by the implications of another 13 months of SoO. The difference in subscribers lost, and the potential to pull players back for a new expansion, between a spring-summer release and a fall-winter release is undoubtably a 1,000,000+. That's a fortune in lost revenue investors simply wouldn't stand for, even if that slow development pace resulted in a magnificent expansion.

You say you don't recall a summer release for an expac, and that's true, but then again they've said they wanted to get expansion times down to 18 months. Inevitably, this means they intended for some winter and some summer releases in the future. I know they haven't lived up to the 18 month expac notion yet, but MoP was really the first one developed entirely with that goal/mindset. It makes sense that this would be the first one that really does finish up quicker, and make room for the next expac sooner, and so it makes sense that a summerish release date for the first time with this new expac would happen. So yeah, I don't buy into the summer release argument, or the year-long SoO argument, or anything else. I'll grant you that the timing is a little off only in the sense that alpha/beta doesn't make a ton of sense having the expac still unannounced, but at the same time, it doesn't make sense for a December release either.

My guess? June 2014 release, with the beta both starting sooner after Blizzcon than it has in the past, and being expedited to cut it's duration.

Also if it did happen then Siege would only be progression for three months and an utter waste of time. They learned their mistake about releasing an expansion too quickly before end-game progression was over with BC and Naxx40.

So I think anything prior to October 2014 is wishful thinking. Although I suppose it could be suggested that if a lot of the folks who were working on Titan are now back working on WoW.. perhaps the Beta will kick off sooner than it normally does as the expansion may be further into development. But previous expansions to MoP all had a similar time line when team numbers would have been higher.. so I wouldn't hold your breath.

Blizzard basically confirmed that beta testing for new expansions will take at least as long as it did in the past for previous expansions. MoP beta testing took about 6 months.

Next weekend at Blizzcon the new expansion will be announced (if not it would be the end of WoW, so they will) and very likely they will also have an estimate on the date they are planning to start the beta testing. Add 6 months to that and you have an estimated release date for the next expansion. My 2 cnts.

Are we pretending that Blizzard didn't release TBC in a January and the fact they want 18 month expansion cycles now? Do the math. They can't have 18 month development cycles and only release expansions in a November. Forget when games were released in the past. In fact forget EVERYTHING about how Blizzard used to do things because none of that matters anymore. They have made significant changes to how they develop and who they hire and how many they hire and that has a huge impact on development cycles. We have already seen it at work in Mop with the content patches every 3 months so there is absolutely not one single reason in the world why Blizzard can't get an expansion out by start of summer.

The release date for TBC kept slipping and it is most likely that having missed the Christmas period that decided to release the game as soon as possible even though January is far from ideal.

Originally Posted by xanzul

Content is content. It doesn't matter how it is packaged, it is still content. If they can do content patches every 3 months (something they never did before) they can certainly do expansions every 12-18 months. Again this isn't the Blizzard of old. They have made huge changes to how the develop content since Cata and it isn't just lip service anymore because we have seen these changes at work in Mop.

They have delivered a similar amount of content during MOP as they did throughout Cata the only difference being that it has been spread over more patches during MOP. Seeing as they have already missed a 12 month expansion cycle and beta testing periods usually last six months it is unlikely that they will release the next expansion within an 18 month cycle.

So I think anything prior to October 2014 is wishful thinking. Although I suppose it could be suggested that if a lot of the folks who were working on Titan are now back working on WoW.. perhaps the Beta will kick off sooner than it normally does as the expansion may be further into development. But previous expansions to MoP all had a similar time line when team numbers would have been higher.. so I wouldn't hold your breath.

Exactly what I was saying. But...if the leak is true that there are new playable races AND a new playable class along with new leveling tech and the crafting update...then December 2014 seems about right because that will be crazy ambitious and I would expect the beta to be closer to 8 months...